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<title>Heartbreaker Vol 2 – Sylvain Gautier Ft. Claude Von Riegen by ShiDreamin</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23953522">Heartbreaker Vol 2 – Sylvain Gautier Ft. Claude Von Riegen</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin'>ShiDreamin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Character Study, Getting Back Together, Idol AU, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 14:56:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,911</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23953522</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>            “Why didn’t you dump me?”<br/>            That there is the question of the century, isn’t it? It’s not like it really matters, when Sylvain lost 20% of his followers overnight and gained them back even quicker when he released his first solo single. Heartbreaker. His face had been on the cover of every magazine: cheater, liar, abuser. The same words he’s always been called.<br/>            Claude had poured him that glass, and ate his eggs garnished with the same herbs they’ve been growing together for a year, when Sylvain had told him he was leaving.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sylvain Jose Gautier &amp; Claude von Riegan, Sylvain Jose Gautier/Claude von Riegan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Heartbreaker Vol 2 – Sylvain Gautier Ft. Claude Von Riegen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            “Sylvain.”</p><p>            Perhaps it shouldn’t be such a surprise to stumble onto Mr. Claude Von Riegen, lead singer and songwriter of the former Golden Deer, now a solo idol debuting at the biggest music festival of the year, considering his face is plastered on every single poster in this place. Sylvain laughs, the same easy laugh he spares for every adoring fan, as fake as the red-bottomed soles he wore on that crusty old stage.</p><p>            “Claude,” Sylvain greets, as though the media isn’t on the verge of exploding at their sides, cameras clicking by faster than a computer spits out code. The smile on Claude’s face is picture-perfect, the kind of practiced grin that looks good from any angle in any lighting, and for a moment Sylvain curses him. For approaching him in a party like this, a hundred more talented souls, equally beautiful. For approaching him at all, wearing that silly excuse of a button up, barely buttoned up.</p><p>            Sylvain bought that for him. He thought Claude threw it out.</p><p>            “Shall I get you something to drink? We could do with some, ah, privacy!” Reporters never get the hint, even as he practically shouts the last word. Claude’s smile grows, tinging on something genuine, and though the heart shades are perfectly fitted over his eyes Sylvain knows that he’s pleased. Knows he hadn’t expected him to accept.</p><p>            What can he say? Sylvain’s a man of many surprises, and if one of them happens to be sweeping the hottest star off his feet at the afterparty, he isn’t complaining.</p><p>            Much.</p><p>            “You’re awful, j-juuuust so you know.” He’s tipsy, maybe. Most definitely. The world is at a constant 23-degree angle, which would be hilarious except Claude looks sexy in <em>any</em> angle, the shirt sticking to his sweaty skin stupidly nice even like this. Goddess. Maybe Sylvain’s no longer tipsy, bordering on drunk, if he’s thinking thoughts like that.</p><p>            Or maybe it’s because he saw Claude wink at him on stage, bouncing on four inch heels with more vigor than Hilda, belting out his new album with the energy of some really, really good sex.</p><p>            “Thanks.” Claude’s laugh is dry; the same kind of passing thing he does in every interview. It’s a rumble in his throat, perfectly timed to sound genuine, and Sylvain only knows how easy it is to fake because he’s seen Claude practicing that exact noise through the phone, even as tears wet the speaker and the raggedy blanket they never managed to throw away. Or maybe Claude has, now, since it’s not like Sylvain lives there anymore.</p><p>            They don’t talk about it.</p><p>            “Why are you even, you’re here?” Sylvain groans, flopping back onto the dusty grounds. Nothing like grass stains on his gazillion dollar suit to end the awful evening he’s had. He’s fairly certain Ingrid was supposed to search for him ages ago, back when the sun was actually in the sky, but she hasn’t called him. Actually, he might not even have his phone on him. Goddess, Ingrid’s going to kill him if Felix doesn’t first.</p><p>            “I was invited?” Claude says, which is cute, really, except it’s not an answer at all. Sylvain waits, except Claude also waits, and it doesn’t matter that it’s been two years and three months because who’s counting? Not him. It doesn’t matter, even if Claude does that stupidly cute worrying of his lips that he only ever does when he thinks no one’s looking, even though Judith has called him out for it fifty times over. Not that Sylvain knows. He probably doesn’t have her number anymore.</p><p>            “Not an answer. Why are you,” his hands gesture empathetically to the floor he’s on, instead of the rather hard looking red benches near the bar, where the remaining party goers with some dignity left between their drugs and their drinks sit, “here?” Claude raises an eyebrow, remarkably more effective with his sunglasses pushed up to his hairline, and wow, that’s sexy.</p><p>            “Because you’re here.”</p><p>            “Shut up, dude.” He’s too drunk for this. Drunk Sylvain doesn’t want to deal with anything, which is a darn shame because sober Sylvain doesn’t want to deal with anything either. He’s supposed to have some hot girl on his arm, someone with nice tits and squishy hips that he could go to town on. Maybe two. Yeah, that’s what he needs.</p><p>            Except he hasn’t had a girl on his arm for nearly four years now. Not since. Not since then.</p><p>            “Why did you break up with me?” Quiet. It’s too much, all at once, the world spinning, the grass growing up, up, higher until it’s bound over his body, growing through him, above him, and then the world’s stepping over his corpse as they laugh and play and dance to the next new stars. No one remembers poor ole Sylvain, that skirt chaser, that heartbreaker.</p><p>            He’s going to die here, alone.</p><p>            “Sylvain! Stop trying to bury yourself in grass!” Or maybe not. Sylvain tries to go for a pout, some crossed eyed thing between puppy dog eyes and a scowl, and even if he may miss the moon he’s surely landed upon the stars, just as Claude grins, unable to help the laugh that flows through him. It’s real, the kind of real laugh that shakes his shoulders and exposes his little pointy canines, the ones Claude hides in all his photoshoots because he used to be picked on for them. Sylvain told him they were adorable. It’s because they are.</p><p>            Claude’s laugh dries out as quickly as it had come, but his smile lingers. It’s fading, the sort of sticky tape someone slaps onto a hole because they’re too lazy to fix it properly. The grass he’s picked off Sylvain slips through his fingers, though he continues to pat at the remaining imaginary dirt.</p><p>            “You dumped me.” Claude corrects. His hands pinch at Sylvain’s jeans, brushing off another green leaf.</p><p>            “What an ass move, huh?” Claude’s mouth does that funny little twist, and then it’s gone, a perfect grin in its place. Not that Sylvain can say anything, when he knows he’s sharing the exact same smile.</p><p>            He forgets who taught who. Claude’s the one with the big designer wardrobe, bought almost exclusively by the women in his life. Judith, Hilda, even Marianne. Hell, Edelgard’s picked out a few pieces for him, and Sylvain’s known her at least twice as long, courtesy of Dimitri. Then again, maybe it’s because he hit on her once when they were twelve and she’s never forgotten.</p><p>            But he digresses. Claude’s the one who taught him how to dress, <em>really</em> dress, the ins and outs of dressing for joy, for sadness, to reflect his mood now and what he wants his mood to be later. Claude’s the chef, the guy with the spices, the herbs, the little flowerpots he had tried to hide when Sylvain came over because it was silly, and he hadn’t been with a guy before, okay? Sylvain had laughed, and learned, and when he had corrected Dedue on how much sun cherry tomatoes needed Dedue had been pleased. Claude had taught him joy, in his friendships, his songs, his life.</p><p>            Sylvain taught him heartbreak. He taught him breakup songs and makeup songs, hip gyrating on stage and mock pole dances around the microphone. He taught Claude that it doesn’t matter how much effort goes into a meal if it rots, that dinner dates don’t really matter, that sometimes the schedule just doesn’t work out and that the solution to the problem is to pretend that there isn’t a problem at all. He taught Claude that maybe love at first sight is just temporary infatuation, and that maybe it’d be better if they were to have an open relationship, instead. Just to see. Just to test the waters.</p><p>            The media had posted fifty pictures of him and Felix in bed. Sylvain had come back expecting to pick up his clothes and go, but Claude had been cooking eggs, and he had broken open that bottle of wine Sylvain had bought on his birthday and poured two glasses instead of one.</p><p>            “Why didn’t you dump me?”</p><p>            That there is the question of the century, isn’t it? It’s not like it really matters, when Sylvain lost 20% of his followers overnight and gained them back even quicker when he released his first solo single, <em>Heartbreaker</em>. His face had been on the cover of every magazine: cheater, liar, abuser. The same words he’s always been called.</p><p>            Claude had poured him that glass, and ate his eggs garnished with the same herbs they’ve been growing together for a year, when Sylvain had told him he was leaving.</p><p>            “I didn’t want to.” Claude shrugs, rolling his shoulders back, his hand finally leaving Sylvain’s leg. He almost misses it against the night chill, the warmth the alcohol provided fading as the desert cold picks up.</p><p>            “Why?”</p><p>            “Because you wanted me to dump you,” there’s a second shrug, smaller than the first. Sylvain sighs, letting his eyes fall close. That’s true, isn’t it? A month, then another, and a third, and before he had known it he had moved in. They had a game room in that house, where the floor was a chess board made up of tiles, and they have carpets that ran from side to side printed with every game they could find. There was the science room, as he so dubbed it, just a second kitchen where Claude hid away and planted his flowers and made the wildest smoothies Sylvain’s ever tasted. There was the art room, on the very top floor, where the balcony invited the sun every morning and the stars every night, where Sylvian had learned to paint for the very first time.</p><p>            It had been home, for nearly a year.</p><p>            How could he have said that it was too long, too much? That security was only good for those who wanted it, that privacy was just a fleeting window of chance? That life wasn’t nice to Sylvain Jose Gautier, and it was even crueler to those he loved.</p><p>            Claude had taken a year off music. The tabloids had cried for the death of the young talent for all of three days before they buzzed on to a new hot topic, and then they had cried for the birth of a new skill when Claude had been announced as a supporting role for an upcoming film. No one mentioned that auditions take longer than a week, nor that former Blue Lion’s Ashe was in the film, nor that Sylvain had been the one who attended the audition with Claude, had held his hand on the way in and bought him crepes on the way out.</p><p>            Then he had come back, brighter than before, a burning star that enveloped the world in its light. Barbarossa had charted number seven, then four, before hitting that number one spot for two weeks straight, and the very next day Claude had announced that he was invited to the biggest music festival of the year.</p><p>            The Blue Lions had already RSVP’d. It wasn’t enough time to get a replacement drummer, and though Mercedes had offered to switch in it wouldn’t have been fair to her budding career in reality house remodeling.</p><p>            “I listened to your set,” Sylvain offers, less of a bone and more of a scratchy sweater knitted by beginning seven-year-old hands, “I liked it. I preordered the album.” And the 24-hour first-day bonuses, and the first 500 orders premium bundle. He had bought two.</p><p>            “Thanks. I listened to the Blue Lions too.” Claude grins, and his canines are visible. “I liked it. Not as good as Heartbreaker, though.”</p><p>            It’s not an apology. But Claude’s not the one who has to apologize.</p><p>            “I cried when Golden Deer broke up, y’know? It hurt, man.” He hadn’t cried. Sylvain had worn white for a week, sans the little gold star earring he had Claude pierce, the both of them trying and failing to understand the instructions printed in Russian. He had mourned, in the way Claude had taught him how</p><p>            “It wasn’t the same. Lorenz wanted to do that cooking show with Ferdinand, and Lysithea never wanted the spotlight. Hilda and Marianne are doing great, though,” they both smile, something small, something real, the announcement of their engagement still fresh on every tabloid, “Raphael and Ignatz finally made it to Broadway. And it’s not like anyone could stop Leonie from going solo when Jeralt asked for her, right?”</p><p>            “Good for her. If anyone can survive Jeralt’s hell training, it’ll be her.” That, if nothing else, is the truest statement anyone could speak about the music industry. Where Jeralt goes, success follows, and if anyone doubted the statement they’d only have to see the twin Byleth’s yearly salaries to stare at the facts.</p><p>            The conversation falls quiet again. It’s the sort of itchy, dry silence that Sylvain once hated, thought that it meant that no one wanted him to speak, that no one cared to hear him, until he had noticed how Claude’s shoulders relaxed in those moments, how his fingers played less with his cuff, how his legs would still rather than bounce. It’s the sort of silence that means that they’ve heard, they’re digesting, that there’s something still in the air.</p><p>            Sylvain had dodged every issue life has thrown at him, running until they were but distant shadows in the road. Claude had circled every one as he walked, and come around and around again, until he had seen every angle and marked every box and then addressed the situation. He’s patient, in a way that Sylvain isn’t, can’t be, even though Mercedes says he is, wrapping presents he had picked out for every Lion.</p><p>            He hadn’t deserved Claude. He doesn’t now, but Claude had looked for him when he couldn’t muster up the courage to stare at those growing shadows.</p><p>            “I’m working on an album.” It’s supposed to be a secret, penciled in to be announced two months and three days from today, but Sylvain says it anyway. “I’m looking for some guests.”</p><p>            He doesn’t have a bottle of wine bought together, and Claude’s birthday isn’t for another two months. He has a beer stain on his shirt, and grass stains on his jacket, and fake red bottoms because he hates buying real ones. He stinks of sweat, of alcohol, of mistakes that he doesn’t know how to apologize for. That he, mostly, doesn’t want to.</p><p>            Sylvain’s trying. It’s maybe a little too much, a little too late, but he’s trying, and that’s all he can offer. That’s all he ever can, and it was good enough for Dimitri, it was good enough for the Blue Lions, for all the people who he’s loved and been loved back.</p><p>            He’s trying, and once upon a time Claude had loved him for it.</p><p>            “I don’t know,” Claude shrugs, easy, “I’m pretty busy. New album, new tour, might be even on set in two hours. Sometimes, the schedule just doesn’t work out, you know?” He does. He had said that to Claude, once and then twice, and then five times over, and they never ended up going to their anniversary dinner, did they?</p><p>            Sylvain winces, the memory sticky in his mind. Claude doesn’t have to accept. It’s not like he wrote the album with anyone particular in mind, not like he had wanted a duet for track number two. Much. He hadn’t wanted it that much.</p><p>            But he had wanted it. And he had written it listening to the samples in Barbarossa, and he had opened his phone and remembered that he had deleted Claude’s contact. He had known the number by memory and punched in every key, and then he had stared at his phone until it timed out and gone back to writing his song. He had made eggs, with the herbs he grew himself with Dedue’s help and Annette’s frequent visits, and had poured himself a glass and then drank the rest of the bottle instead.</p><p>            It’s been two years, and he’s never forgotten the tune of the song Claude hums in the morning, when he opens his laptop before his fridge, when he spends a half hour playing chess with the AI until Sylvain flops onto his shoulder, and they debated where they should move next.</p><p>            “I wrote a sequel to Heartbreaker,” Sylvain swallows. Girls never like to be pushed; they enjoy the chase, sure, but when a guy can’t take no they never forget. But Claude isn’t another girl, isn’t another pretty thing Sylvain dangles from his arms because the media expects him to, and so he dunks the hook into the water and dives in, too tight jeans and sweat stained shirt. It’s cold, chilled to the bone, and he can’t blame the alcohol buzz anymore when it’s been shocked right off. “I want you to sing in it.”</p><p>            “I’m pretty busy,” Claude repeats, yet the smile Claude spares him is a little too wide, a little too hopeful to be good for any magazine spreads. “Ask me again in the morning.”</p><p>            “I don’t have your number,” Sylvain says. He has it memorized, and Claude knows he has it memorized, but he doesn’t say a word.</p><p>            “I’m staying in room 1403. You can come by in the morning.” It’s not a date. It’s not even a night out, no girls, no lights, no parties. It’s an offer, and they might not even have been booked in the same hotel, but Sylvain doesn’t hesitate before he nods.</p><p>            “I’m going to hurt you again.” He’s expecting some half-assed lie about how Claude had never been hurt in the first place, as though he hadn’t cut off his braid and gone two weeks without that braided hoop earring his grandma had given him.</p><p>            “You can try.” It’s a challenge, a bet, something on the edge of a promise. It’s something Sylvain doesn’t deserve, never has, never will. But it’s something he’s been given, and if nothing else he’s always cherished every gift he’s got.</p><p>            It turns out that they weren’t booked in the same hotel. Blue Lions sleeps on floor twelve, the highest their hotel has to offer, and though the shower is nice and the beds are fluffy, Sylvain finds that Ingrid doesn’t have his phone, actually, and that it turns out he doesn’t have the guts to punch in Claude’s number on anyone else’s. There’s at least three blocks of hotels booked out because of the festival, and a dozen more resorts scattered within a half mile. The sane thing to do would be to sleep, to rest up and call Claude in the morning after he finds his phone.</p><p>            He sleeps. The beds here are softer than the one he has in the complex he and Felix share, but maybe that’s because he hates investing in a mattress. The nice thing about having the festival prepare rooms is that he gets to rest alone, a whole room to himself, instead of the crowded three people in a bed situation tours normally end up being. At least he’s not on the bus.</p><p>            Sylvain sleeps. He rests up, and awakes at 5am, with a pounding headache. There’s free breakfast in the lobby, and he scoops himself half a plate of scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and some melons. American style breakfast, they call it, and he scarfs it down before leaving.</p><p>            The first two hotels also don’t have a fourteenth floor, and the third, though a towering sixty-two floors high, refuses to allow guests to enter. The fourth is definitely not festival approved, and the fifth results in an angry blonde Sylvain may-or-may-not recognize chasing him out. It’s the sixth, the one whose lobby faces a man-made lake and whose parking lot takes up nearly half a street on its own, that grants him an open door.</p><p>            “You’re early.” Claude mentions. Is he?</p><p>            “Maybe I was excited to see you, baby.” Too much, too fast. The image of a sweet girl on his lap fades away as quickly as it had fluttered in, and in its stead is the beginnings of a blank smirk on Claude’s face. He’s in the doorway, still, the hotel’s pajamas a size too large, taller in television.</p><p>            “Why are you here?” Claude corrects. There’s a million flirtatious lines on his lips, jokes he’s bounced off of before, one liners that he’s memorized on the march to Hell and back.</p><p>            “Are you going to sing for me?” Sylvain asks. Claude raises an eyebrow, that one quirked way he does for the magazine covers and perfume ads.</p><p>            “I’m busy,” Claude says, and amends, “ask me again tomorrow. Here,” and though they both know every digit, Claude hands him a post-it anyway. It has the hotel logo on the top, his scrawl in the middle, and a doodle of a star on the bottom.</p><p>            It’s an out, a dismissal, a silent “it’s six, Sylvain” and they have makeup to do, studio visits to tour and interviews to attend. They have lives, two separate ones, schedules that are nearly impossible to align unless they try. Unless he stops and makes time, the time he once spent running away in place, circling and circling, seeing the problem from every angle. Seeing the solutions for every possibility.</p><p>            There are things he’s taught Claude. There are things Claude taught him too.</p><p>            “Thanks,” Sylvain says, though his feet don’t move, his shoulders don’t curve. The elevator dings from behind them, the shuffling feet of a family into the closing doors, and here he stands, in the doorway of room 1403 of a hotel that isn’t his.</p><p>            Claude looks at him. He’s been stared at, into, and for once in a long, long time, Sylvain lets himself be seen.</p><p>            “Why are you,” Claude’s hands make a wide square, encompassing the space between them, below them, “here?”</p><p>            “Because you’re here.” It earns him a smile, a real one, the kind that spreads from cheek to cheek and shows every crevice of Claude’s teeth. It’s the kind that flashes his canines, the ones that will crack their lipstick before the first half of the set finishes, and though Sylvain’s gone through fifty lectures about how it’ll earn him wrinkles he knows he’s sharing the same exact smile.</p><p>            The door slips shut behind them, a beginning spark to something Sylvain doesn’t understand. He thinks Claude might not either, and that they’re flying on the seats of their pants. He has an apology he wants to say, and he thinks Claude might have one too, even though Sylvain doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. Then again, maybe Claude doesn’t think he has either.</p><p>            Maybe they’re just living this life because they can, planting flowers in the gutters and playing backgammon before breakfast. They’re stringing words into a song, and turning taps into a rhythm, dancing to a tune that only they can hear. And maybe it’ll be love, maybe it’ll be lust, maybe it’ll be friendship ever after or maybe they’ll crash and burn, and the media will have a field day for a total of three hours.</p><p>            Maybe it doesn’t have to be any of those things.</p><p>            “So here’s what I’m thinking for the lyrics…”</p><p>            Maybe it can be Sylvain, and Claude. Liar and cheater and trickster, singer and drummer and dancer and mixer. Heartbreakers.</p><p>            Maybe they can be happy, and all Sylvain has to do is let it happen.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>All Claude ships are good Claude ships. Claude Love 2020. Drown the man in affection!!</p><p>I've seen some Claudevain art and Idol AU art floating around my twitter and had the DIRE need to write this. I have a ton of worldbuilding notes/headcanons and such that I'll probably put up on twitter later, but for now:<br/>- Golden Deer changes genre constantly. They originally had a ton of arguments about the music genre they wanted to do, so every album they change genres.<br/>- The Byleth twins become dancing coaches! They're not very good at emoting in songs but they express their ~passion~ through dance.<br/>- Ashe played a minor character in a thriller movie that exploded his carer. His character was about a sweet boy who secretly is an assassin, and for the rest of his life he will still get interviews about how well he played a murderer. After retiring from acting on TV, Ashe turns to cooking on TV. He's your favorite morning cookshow host!<br/>- Edelgard and Dimitri are half-siblings who argue too much, but they love each other fondly. The media spread a bunch of rumors that they were dating, only for their cameras to ""suddenly"" explode. Hmm, wonder who could have caused that?</p><p>If you enjoyed reading my fics, want to yell about found families, or support me, please check out my twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/shidreamin/"> @Shidreamin </a>! I’m more active on there, and you’ll be able to see my zine previews before I post them here, as well as some WIP in the future! I've also recently set up a <a href="https://curiouscat.me/shidreamin/"> Curious Cat </a> and <a href="https://ko-fi.com/shidreamin/"> Ko-Fi </a>, if you'd prefer messaging me anonymously. ♥ ♥ ♥</p></blockquote></div></div>
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